GLoSS

GLoSS Frequently Asked Questions

How can I get GLoSS to pull resized images from my Gallery instead of fullsize ones?

A helpful GLoSS user, Bob Bristow, passes along the following information about one way to configure your Gallery to serve you resized images instead of the originals (the Gallery Remote Protocol that GLoSS uses doesn't appear to natively allow GLoSS to request resized images, hence this workaround):

1. Make a new user and group in Gallery; e.g. create a group called "resized" and add the new user to it.
2. Change the permissions on all your albums as follows.
3. Add the "resized" group to all of your albums.
4. Add the "view items" permission and the "view resized items" for the "resized" group.
5. Remove the "everybody" group permission called "view all items".
6. Re-add the "view items" permission and the "view resized items" for the "resized" group.

Now GLoSS should only pull the largest resized image instead of the original.

Note: I haven't tried this myself, so can't personally guarantee success, although Bob assures me it means GLoSS is working well on his Gallery of over 20,000 2-4MB images.

GLoSS locks up/won't refresh on machines with Google Desktop installed

I've experienced this on one machine which also had Google Desktop installed. It seems that the Google Desktop indexing service (or one of the other constituent parts of Google Desktop) is interfering with the ability of GLoSS to retrieve images successfully from it's cache folder. If you are also experiencing this issue, I suggest you try one of the suggestions below, since I'm currently completely unsure how to handle this situation inside GLoSS:

• set your Google Desktop Preferences to not search for items in your GLoSS cache folder(s).
• remove the standard Photos gadget from your Google Desktop Sidebar.
• Similar situation with a Cisco product, plus suggested solution: http://www.cisco.com/en/US/products/sw/voicesw/ps2237/products_tech_note09186a00803ca837.shtml

How do I help others to easily configure GLoSS to access my Gallery?

GLoSS stores configuration information (e.g. Gallery URL, username, password, cache folder, etc) in the Windows Registry. This data can be easily and selectively exported to a file, which can be used to configure GLoSS on another PC (assuming GLoSS has been already installed on that other PC). The process is as follows:

1. Configure GLoSS on your PC as desired.
2. Run the Windows Registry Editor. (From the Run... option on the Windows Start menu, run regedit.exe) ^*
3. Navigate to the following key: HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ildica.com\GLoSS
4. Right-click on that key and choose the Export option.
5. Choose to save the resulting .reg file in a suitable location, ensuring that the Export Range option is set to Selected Branch.
6. Open the resulting .reg file in Notepad (or similar), and prune some of the irrelevant information; for example, the history of images which have been shown on your PC.
7. Give the resulting .reg file to others who require their copy of GLoSS to be configured to access your Gallery.
8. By double-clicking on the .reg file, they should be prompted to merge the contents of the .reg file into their Windows Registry.

See More information below for an example .reg. file. The only item that is really required by GLoSS is the Gallery URL, and potentially the Username and Password if you don't want GLoSS to have only anonymous access to your Gallery.

^* NOTE: incorrect use of the Registry Editor has the potential to knacker your PC; use at your own risk!

More information on "How do I help others to easily configure GLoSS to access my Gallery?" »

How does Secondary Caching work?

Secondary Caching was implemented in response to a request from a happy user to provide the ability for multiple instances of GLoSS to partially share cache folders. You can now specify a secondary cache folder for GLoSS to check for local versions of Gallery images before GLoSS downloads the image from your Gallery. This is expected to be useful in small home networks, especially with laptops, etc.

It works as follows:

• When attempting to download an image from your Gallery, GLoSS checks to see whether or not the image already exists in your secondary cache folder. If it does exist there, but doesn't already exist in your primary cache folder, the file is copied to your primary cache folder.
• If this copy is successful, or the image already existed in your primary cache folder, GLoSS uses that image.
• If the image doesn't already exist in your caches, GLoSS downloads it from your Gallery and stores it in your primary cache folder.

An example of how to configure Secondary Caching: if you have two PCs/laptops, you could configure them both with local primary cache folders, and then set the secondary cache folders on each PC to point to the primary cache folder on the other PC.

I'd like to link to the GLoSS website - is there anything I should know?

That's great, thanks! There are a couple of things I should point out:

• It's probably best not to link to a specific installer version, since I don't keep old versions of the GLoSS installer on my website. Instead, please link to http://gloss.ildica.com/download_gloss.php.
• You are free to use, copy, and distribute GLoSS, etc, but I'd be grateful to be identified as the original developer of GLoSS by you linking back to my website, and indicating that I'm grateful for PayPal donations for use of GLoSS.

Will you add feature "X" to GLoSS?

GLoSS started off as a pet project for me so that I could "push" images on to my not-particularly-computer-literate family's PCs (most of whom live in the UK while I live in New Zealand). I also have a full time job. Therefore, I'm mainly motivated to add functionality to GLoSS which seems useful to me with my Gallery. It may also be that I don't have my Gallery configured in such a way that's easy for me to test the suggested functionality against.
Having said all that, I've been really grateful for the feedback that I've received from people who've made suggestions and tested GLoSS for me, and have implemented quite a few previous suggestions as a result.
Also, while I'm grateful for any PayPal donations that users of GLoSS are kind enough to make, there aren't enough to cover my hosting bills, let alone encourage me to spend more of my precious free time adding unlimited bells and whistles to GLoSS! Please don't let that stop you making donations and/or suggestions; it's just that I may not be able to commit to adding a particular feature to GLoSS.

How does the auto-purge functionality work?

The auto-purge functionality is designed to remove images in your cache, which no longer exist in your Gallery.
If you have enabled the auto-purge feature, GLoSS follows this process:

1. Whenever a random image is returned from your Gallery, the file timestamp of the copy of that image cached on your PC is updated to the current time.
2. Then GLoSS checks all the image files in your cache, and deletes any that have timestamps older than that set in the auto-purge settings.

What this means is that there are a number of circumstances in which images may be purged from your local cache folder. The following are circumstances under which the timestamps of cached images get older and older until they become eligible for auto-purging:

• image(s) were manually added to your local cache folder (so never existed in your Gallery to be retrieved by GLoSS),
• the album containing the image(s) has been deleted from your Gallery,
• or, you have changed the selection of albums in your Gallery that you wish GLoSS to retrieve random images from.

GLoSS claims JPEGs have been successfully uploaded, but they don't appear in my Gallery

One possible reason for this is that if the Quota module is activated in your Gallery, the image(s) you're trying to upload may break the quota limit set for your account. Unfortunately, Gallery's Remote Protocol always reports that it has successfully uploaded the image(s). This is an issue with the Remote Protocol rather than GLoSS. If you want to encourage the Gallery developers to fix this bug, you can vote for it over at the Gallery site here.

What image file formats does GLoSS support?

GLoSS has been successfully tested with JPEGs and PNGs. In testing, it appears that for some other image types (e.g. TIFF) uploaded to Gallery, Gallery by default displays JPEG versions of these in your browser instead. Therefore GLoSS will also support these types of image, since the Image Block will serve JPEGs instead.

Can I use GLoSS to display images other than those from my Gallery?

The short answer is Yes.
GLoSS stores all images from your Gallery in it's local cache folder on your PC. When GLoSS is offline (either because you've explicitly set GLoSS to Offline mode or because you're not currently connected to the internet), it will use random images from the local cache folder on your PC.
Therefore, if you add more images to this folder, and set GLoSS to Offline, these "non-Gallery" images will be available for random display by GLoSS too.
However, when GLoSS is in Online mode and you are connected to the internet, it will only display cached images that have been downloaded from your Gallery.
NOTE: If you have the auto-purge functionality in GLoSS enabled, you may like to consider turning it off, as these manually added images will be elegible to be purged from the local cache folder as determined by your auto-purge settings.

Is there a version of GLoSS for other operating systems than Windows XP etc?

Not at the minute, and there is unlikely to be so in the future at this stage. GLoSS is developed using Borland Delphi 2006, and as such is really only aimed currently at 32-bit Windows operating systems such as Windows 2000 and XP. Use of techniques such as alpha-blending also mean that current versions of GLoSS will probably not work correctly on Windows 98 etc. I only test GLoSS on Windows XP, although I'm aware of users happily using it on Windows 2000 at least.

Does GLoSS contain any spyware/adware/etc?

Absolutely not.
GLoSS exists simply to download and display images on your computer from the Gallery2 installation that you configure it to use. Therefore GLoSS will only use the internet to communicate with webservers that you tell it to. The single exception to this is the simple version check that GLoSS performs on startup, when it will check the latest available version number of GLoSS from the GLoSS website at http://gloss.ildica.com/. GLoSS does not send any identifiable information to the GLoSS website during this process; it simply asks what the latest available version number is. GLoSS is purely supported by PayPal donations.

How do I move or resize GLoSS Desktop widgets?

Hold down the Ctrl key on your keyboard while you drag the borders and/or surface of the widget as desired.